J<.J4 Roosczrlt Wild Life Aiiuals 



where it is common, it is frequently taken by hook, often to the chagrin of the 

 fisherman who expected a bass or a pickerel, but its gameness enables it to furnish 

 as much sport as any other fish of its size. For this reason and from the proba- 

 bility that prejudice against it as a source of food will be overcome, and from its 

 zoological interest on account of its being a primitive form and a survivor of a 

 t\-pe relatively abundant in geological times, it may yet become more generally 

 considered a desirable inhabitant of our waters. 



Breeding Habits and Life History. Situations suitable for the breeding of 

 Bowfins in Oneida Lake are abundant. These are shallows among thick vegeta- 

 tion at the lake margins, stream mouths, in bays and similar places. These fish 

 make nests, which are more or less circular areas from which plants have been 

 cleared and the soil removed so as to form depressions and expose roots or other 

 objects to which the eggs may be attached. The male fish guards the eggs and later 

 accompanies the schools of young until, according to Forbes and Richardson ('09, 

 p. 40), they are about four inches long. Reighard ('03, p. 66) found the breed- 

 ing season near Ann Arbor, Michigan, to be from about the middle of April to the 

 middle of June. Dean ('99, p. 250) states that in Wisconsin, April i to early 

 June is usually the maximum period of spawning. Details concerning the life 

 history are given by Reighard ('03), Dean ('99), and Gill ('07, p. 431). 



Evermann and Clark ('20, p. 318) found Dogfish spawning toward the end 

 of April in the Lake Maxinkuckee region. Nests were made by hollowing out 

 places in muck, eighteen to thirty inches in diameter. A male was usually found 

 liy each nest guarding the eggs. 



Richardson ('13, p. 407) near Havana, Illinois, in April found nests in water 

 two and a half to three feet deep, choked with vegetation. The nests were about 

 two and a half feet in diameter, four inches deep and nearly circular. In the 

 bottom were grass roots to which many of the eggs adhered. There were from 

 two thousand to five thousand eggs in each. The male fishes, about twenty inches 

 long, hovered over the nests and were very bold. Kelly { '24. p. 73 ) notes a male 

 Bowfin guarding its young and being very aggressive. It wmild bite the end of a 

 pole held before it. 



Habitat. The relatively few Bowfins in ( )nci(la Lake pnibably live in the 

 deep water usually, but come tci shallow water ;it ni.yht and during the breeding 

 season. This appears tci he their usiral habit, .-iccdrding to Reighard ('03, p. 65) 

 and Hankinson's observatinns in nther lakes, chii'lly in Michigan. 



The fact that no Bowfins were taken in the mrmy collections we made in shal- 

 low water, between the middle of June and the middle of September is significant. 

 Had the fish Ijcen breeding during this time, the trammel-net i^laced about plant- 

 o,vere<l sIukiIs wnnld nnd.mbtedlv have (il.tained a few. yet their hrd)it of hiding 



voung should have been among the thousands of other sni;ill lishes we took from 

 shallow water, if they had been there in any numbers, since the young a])pear to 

 be taken in a seine with little difliculty (Dean. '99. p. 254"). 



Coker ('17, p. 2) calls it ,-i "lover of sluggish waters," .-uid "It .seems to like 

 the weedv waters, freiinenting ttie shallows at night .-ind returning to the deeper 

 places by (l;i\-." lie nuMitioiis I'lowlins being found during the winter so closely 



